Things to see with the beginning of monsoon around the corner and merely 99mm of rainfall so far, the nation is now facing the second driest pre-monsoon spell in 65 years, as per to the India Meteorological Department (IMD) data.
Since the year 1954, when the nation experienced 93.9mm of rainfall in the pre-monsoon season of March, April as well as May, the showers have immersed below the three-figure mark only in the year 2009 (99mm), 2012 (the driest at 90.5mm) as well as 2019 (99mm).
The highest insufficiency has been observed in Madhya Maharashtra, Marathwada and Vidarbha in Maharashtra, Konkan-Goa, Gujarat, Saurashtra as well as Kutch, coastal Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Puducherry, among various other parts of India.
Some other parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, western Uttar Pradesh, north interior Karnataka, Telangana, as well as Rayalaseema (in Andhra Pradesh) has also recorded scarce pre-monsoon rainfall, though it was better than what the whole of Maharashtra has experienced lately.
Most commonly, the term monsoon is used in order to refer to the rainy phase of a seasonally changing pattern, even though in technical terms there is also a dry phase.
Pulak Guhathakurta, who is the head of Climate Application and User Interface at IMD’s Office of Climate Research and Services, said in a news report that past research has discovered a trend of falling pre-monsoon rainfall over the previous century in western India, particularly Maharashtra. “However, such a trend has not been observed across the entire country till now. This may have something to do with the shifting of the rainfall pattern,” Guhathakurta said.
He said pre-monsoon rains were essentially significant for agriculture, groundwater recharge as well as to uphold and preserve the soil moisture. He then further explained that, “Pre-monsoon rains tend to allay some of the severe water shortage problem in a region. Even deficient pre-monsoon rainfall can go a long way in maintaining the soil moisture necessary for agriculture. Over the past 11 years, Maharashtra got most of its monsoon rainfall in just one or two months, with heavy to very heavy showers in short bursts. This poses a flood risk and also, much of the water is wasted.”
Anupam Kashyapi, who is from IMD, Pune, recently said, “In the four regions of the country, the maximum premonsoon rainfall deficiency has been witnessed in the southern peninsula (-48% ), followed by northwest India (-29%), Central India (-17%) and east and northeast India (-12%). Parts of north Rajasthan, northern and central MP, southern UP, southern Punjab and Haryana, had good rains.”
